Money talks (and walks)

I bought a bag full of old foreign banknotes from an antique fair on Sunday – funny paying money for money. Anyway, what struck me was not only how beautiful they were but that most notes featured serious looking men, gazing into thin air.

Here we have two polish men related to the communist era…the guy on the right is Ludwik Warynski, a socialist activist during the 19th century in Poland. The ruling regime at the time didn’t like him very much and he became a political prisoner, suffering for his socialist beliefs. On the left we have Karol Swierczewski, a soviet military officer and general who behaved quite badly apparently during the 20th century, often drunk and he signed many death penalties for those who opposed communism. I think it’s funny that these two personalities who never lived at the same time, are almost conflicting in their approaches. The war of banknotes is born! Does the 50 or 100 win?

This illustration was done using elements only from the banknotes themselves – it’s lovely to get up close and personal with the wonderful textures that a note has. Next time you use a tenner, give it a closer look.

The wordless world of Frans Masereel

Wandering through a flea market in Berlin, a rather nice set of small prints hanging from a ‘washing line’ caught my eye. They were woodcuts taken from a book,  I learned, by a highly regarded woodcut artist, Frans Masereel. So I bought this one for a tenner and the search began to find out more about it (and him).

The print is taken from a wordless book (a very early graphic novel) of 83 woodcuts first published in 1920. The book is called ‘The Idea’. The story is political in tone and it goes something like this (from a recent review): “An Idea springs from the mind of the Thinker and goes out into the world. She is naked, female, radiant, a pocket Venus embodying all ideals, and she finds herself in the mean streets of a twentieth century city — among politicians and fat cats, torturers and striptease audiences, who take the Idea and use it for their own ends, or reject and try to destroy it.“

The woodcuts are impressive – bold and detailed (yet pretty tiny – 6.5x9cm). Mine is more simple than others, featuring just one figure (the Thinker), crying because he is ‘sending’ his idea into the world. While I’m not that comfortable with creativity being gendered (and then abused!), I rather like the concept of an idea being represented by something physical that goes out into the world. Hopefully now in more peaceful times (in the West at least) we could send an idea into the world and it be well watered, grown and listened to carefully, rather than tortured – there’s a lot to be grateful for.

There’s plenty to read about the work  and lots of examples of other pages so check it out…

 

 

In praise of the everyday drawing

Now, this little book is a bit of a revelation. Anthropology may seem a bit off the radar but there are rich pickings in here. In ‘I swear I saw this’ Taussig makes a strong case for the use of drawing during fieldwork and includes some stunning quotes about the power of the fast drawing as opposed to detailed writing. Here’s one such quote…

“Whether looked at on their own or in the context of their surrounding text, the drawings in notebooks that I have in mind seem to me to butt against realism, with its desire for completeness. The drawings comes across as fragments that are suggestive of a world beyond, a world that does not have to be explicitly recorded and is in fact all the more “complete” because it cannot be completed. In pointing away from the real, they capture something invisible and auratic that makes the thing depicted worth depicting”.

What is particularly striking is the idea that recording everything precisely is to “erase” it. Taussig uses a wonderful quote from Stephane Mallarme – “The flowers that fall from my mouth are changed into toads” to emphasise the point that as soon as something is spoken it loses its magic, and that nothing can be entirely captured through language.

Reading the book made me reflect on the rough little sketches of things I’ve made over the years. His book helped me realise why I like looking at them (despite the fact they are not ‘good’ drawings). They’re made purely to remind me of something seen on the streets, usually something quite ordinary, made very quickly. It doesn’t matter that the drawing is not precise because it’s not meant to be seen by anyone else. What makes it ‘good’ for me is precisely its imprecision.  Looking back at this tiny sketch I can still imagine the old woman and her old dog sharing the same staggering walk, something that seemed strangely moving at the time, despite only fleetingly seen. Their movement was in my thoughts when my hand moved to draw this – a photograph just wouldn’t have captured this for me (though the dog might have ended up with 4 legs!).

When referring to sketches of everyday life I really have to mention Danny Gregory and his mantra which is ‘draw everyday’. His sketch-based books are exactly what Taussig would appreciate. Gregory appreciates life by constantly drawing the life around him, capturing its essence rather than its exact likeness. Taussig does exactly the same thing but in far flung countries  - to capture unfamiliar life and to make more sense of it.

So, the old woman and her dog will continue shuffling through the pages of my notebook. Life itself really is a revelation if you take time to look and draw. Even a quick glance momentarily recorded on paper tells us something. So maybe we all should be picking up that pencil more often, suspending all judgement of quality, and enjoying freezing a moment in time – it will still be there, ready for us to “complete”, or defrost it, the next time we open the book.

3 Illustrated ‘Fork’ Tales

The fork has a rich history – progressing from 2 prongs to 4, passing from the delicate hands of gentlefolk to the most burly man, crossing borders of Greece, Italy and France, finally to land on our shores in the 1600’s– but what lies in its future?

Who’d have though the humble fork could evolve so usefully – reducing the need for hands, a flame or even background music. While the forks here are straight from my imagination, here are some innovative designs for forks straight (and curvy) from the shops…who’d have thought they could be so versatile. So next time you reach for the fork, give it some attention and marvel at its beautiful simplicity.

Round and around

A weird and wonderful find this weekend was ‘A Pictorial History of the Carousel’ by Frederick Fried from 1978. I mean, such books can’t be left on the shelf for £2…

I’m going to call my slightly adjusted diagram (taken from an illustration in the book from 1789) –   ‘If the horse knew what was coming’. I mean, if you knew you were destined for a life of constant circles and heavy riders I’m sure you’d bolt from the nuts and bolts fastening you to the centre.

Below are three shots from the book. The earliest picture of a carousel is found in a Byzantine relief made 1500 years ago (pictured below). The carousel has a surprisingly interesting history and seems to have independently developed in several countries.

In certain tribes mexicans would ceremoniously suspend themselves by ropes and dangerously, they would spin around from the top of an 80 foot pole. In Europe, the word ‘carousel’ comes from the ancient Italian and Spanish words ‘garosello’ or ‘carosella’ meaning ‘little war’. This referred to a serious game of horsemanship played in twelfth century Turkey which the Italians and Spanish crusaders ‘stole’ and brought home. It didn’t at that point involve spinning round in circles. In France, around 1680, horsemanship skills were developed as horses and chariots were suspended by chains to help young horsemen spear rings with lances. From magical ritual to training tool, the carousel only started to entertain towards the end of the 1600s. In 1729 the term ‘merry-go-round’ appeared for the first time and the rest is history.

Looking at the wonderful illustrations in the book, from the photographs of horses (and the bizarre array of other creatures that riders would sit on including ostriches, frogs and ‘the whale’ pictured in the last picture) to the music machines, you can’t help but admire the spectacle of the carousel. It’s also odd to imagine the pleasure of going around in circles, all these cultures spinning themselves into a frenzy at great speed – almost like flying for the first time. The moral of the story is that it’s always worth rummaging around charity shop book shelves for these little merry, mind-dizzying gems.

A work in progress

“A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it everyday and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly afraid to open the door to its room” – Annie Dillard, The Writing Life.

I’ve recently been invited to take part in a Pecha Kucha (20 slides, 20 seconds each) at Sheffield Hallam University. The remit? 20 slides about process – an emphasis on the “stuff more than the designed outcome”. It should be a very interesting evening. Meanwhile I wonder about what to include…

I get a great deal of inspiration from the written word (and concepts expressed as words in the first instance) so it’ll be a fun set of slides to put together. I also get ideas by ‘reinterpretation’ – seeing things as other things.  A quick glance at the open, blank page of my sketchbook made me see a visual connection with my own ‘progress’ and the wonderful Dillard quote above and this illustration was born.  I don’t look at my sketchbook with such fear but it’s much less intimidating to fill when I’m feeding it everyday. Oh, and mine is more a tiger than a lion, but any big cat will do…

A wave’s parentheses

At work, the English Department have been running a series of poetry readings and I was lucky enough to see and hear Anne Stevenson read the other day. She’s just turned 80, the same age that Sylvia Plath would be now. One poem struck me in particular – ‘On Harlech Beach’, a wonderful vision of a beach scene becoming movable type. I just loved the imagery of this when she read it out, and it made me think of brackets (parentheses!) in a whole new light.

 

Knowing the right size for your world

A while ago I did this picture that played on the fact that the body has almost the same percentage of water as the world…just above 72%…quite an amazing fact. I imagined our organs like the oceans (as they are labeled here, though too small to see) and our life as a voyage of ourselves as well as others – they are other seas that flow into ours. Playing with scale provokes a lot of questions and draws new parallels.

Last night I was reading about scale, of expansion and shrinkage by one of my favourite authors, Jeanette Winterson, in her biography ‘Why be happy when you could be normal?’. I pretty much grew up with her words as a teenager and still look to her when I need to admire a strong woman and a wonderful writer (isn’t it great when your heroes stay heroes?). Anyway, here’s what she has to say about size.

“Growing up is difficult. Strangely, even when we have stopped growing physically, we seem to have to keep on growing emotionally, which involves both expansion and shrinkage, as some parts of us develop and others must be allowed to disappear…rigidity never works; we end up being the wrong size for our world. I used to have an anger so big it would fill up my house. I used to feel so hopeless that I was like Tom Thumb who has to hide under a chair so as not to be trodden on. It seems to me that being the right size for your world – and knowing that both you and your world are not by any means fixed dimensions – is a valuable clue to learning how to live”

And I believe her. It might be time to get the tape measure out and check our proportions, not in relation to a beauty myth, but in proportion to a world we can live happily in. Once the ratio is right, we can then set sail on that voyage, prepared though to constantly adjust the sails.

Exercising on a Saturday Afternoon

Quick Exercise: Take an old book from the bookcase, in this case ‘The History of Communications’ by Maurice Fabre from 1962 and see how it can be changed, through subtle additions, to make a new page.

 

Chop…chop…

‘Chop your own Wood. It will warm you twice’, Christmas 2012

Merry Christmas! Tis the season to be jolly and to keep warm so I thought I’d share these words of wisdom from Henry Ford (ironically while waiting at home for a man to fix the boiler).

It’s a great positive quote, a very visual quote and it was just asking to be made into a picture. It initiated the great log-hunt of December, which ended successfully. The ‘O’s are the combined efforts of photography and a rubbing of the grain of the wood.

So here’s to chopping wood in 2013 and lots of ideas and actions being lit.